We’re a tough bunch, those who follow hockey in this town. We take a first-place hockey team and carve it like a Thanksgiving turkey. We watch a tough, grinding overtime road win over the Red Wings and complain because it was 2-1 and not 12-1.

Shoot, back in the day we even booed Larry Robinson.

I came to this town in the spring of 1971, just in time to see Jean Béliveau win his last Stanley Cup. In the 45 years since, I’ve seen only one star player get a free pass: Guy Lafleur partied like Prohibition was coming back, played like a demon and was never booed.

Enter Maximillian Kolenda Pacioretty, stage left. “Patches,” to those who love him (and there are plenty who do) is in the throes of what Montreal’s notoriously critical fans consider a difficult season. It started with Team USA, when John Tortorella decided to go Full Jerk on Pacioretty. Tortorella’s tactics, predictably, backfired. Pacioretty wilted under the criticism and Team USA showed less “compete” than you might have expected from Team Latvia.

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Then there was the off-season flap when radio reporter Michel Villeneuve claimed coach Michel Therrien had called Pacioretty the “worst captain in Canadiens history” while playing in a golf tournament in June. Villeneuve was fired from 91.9 Sport for the report and Therrien denied he had said any such thing — but no matter what was said in public, the relationship between coach and captain has to be frayed.

Finally, as an indication of just how absurd things get, Pacioretty was raked when he failed to take the full star turn on the ice after scoring the winning goal against the Carolina Hurricanes last Thursday. Only Montreal could turn that into fodder for a couple of news cycles.

There’s a lesson here. Perhaps we need to learn to take our players as they are. Pacioretty is 28, already in his ninth season with the Canadiens. Like everyone else, I’ve been impatient with him at times: he’s a finesse forward in a power forward’s body and it seems he could be so much more. But at this stage in his career, you aren’t going to teach the captain new tricks. He scores goals, he feeds his teammates, he’s a splendid penalty-killer and in any other market, that’s more than enough.

In each full season since 2011-2012, Pacioretty has scored 30 goals or more. In the lockout-shortened 2013 campaign he had 15, pretty much on pace for another 30. And he isn’t a goal-scorer alone: in his NHL career to date, he has 179 goals and 179 assists. By any measure except the one we apply to star players in Montreal, Pacioretty is having a good season: He has five goals and nine assists for 14 points and a plus-6, and Pacioretty in full flight is still a treat to watch: A big, agile, fast skater with a surgeon’s hands and a lightning finish with that hard, accurate wrist shot. We haven’t seen it much this season, but the talent is there. It always was.

No, Pacioretty doesn’t drive the net or start throwing bodies around when a teammate is roughed up. There are plenty of guys around who will, if you don’t mind them scoring eight goals a season.

If Pacioretty has a fatal flaw, it’s that he gets down when he’s criticized. In the harsh glare of big-time hockey, you’re not supposed to be thin-skinned. You’re meant to be an industrial-strength hard guy, invulnerable to criticism and hip checks alike. But Pacioretty is intelligent and sensitive, qualities in a sane world are usually considered virtues.

Look, you don’t score 30 goals in the NHL without being tough. You don’t have Zdeno Chara play “Mr. Pacioretty, meet Mr. Pylon” with your head and bounce back. Above all, you don’t play part or all of nine seasons in this pressure cooker and chip in your 30 goals a year unless you’re pretty resilient.

Perhaps it’s time to get off the man’s back and let him play hockey. The Canadiens are going to need Pacioretty. They’re going to need him to make the post-season, they’re going to need him to advance in the playoffs. They’re going to need to find him a place on a consistent line. As Elliotte Friedman demonstrated before the Red Wings game, Therrien this season has tried more combinations with Pacioretty than an absent-minded gym rat trying to open his locker.

Like everyone else, Therrien needs to give Pacioretty a chance. Get off his back, find a line that feels right and leave him there. With the right chemistry, the captain will finish the season with his usual 30 goals — and he’ll still be wearing the “C.”

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